Questions about the big Oakland Army base project? Maybe these folks asked them for you

The scene: Three dozen people, gathered Tuesday evening in a first-floor hearing room at City Hall, full of questions about one of the most ambitious projects ever proposed for the city of Oakland.

The ambitious project generating the questions: The redevelopment of the 366-acre site of the old Oakland Army base—a $500 million proposal expected to provide an estimated 2,800 construction jobs.

The panel trying to answer and field the questions: Al Auletta, program manager for the city’s Office of Neighborhood Investment; Margaret Gordon, longtime West Oakland activist and first-ever local resident to serve on the Port of Oakland Board of Comissioners; Andreas Cluver, Secretary Treasurer of the Alameda Building Trades Council; Kate O’Hara, Campaign Director for the East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy; and Elizama Ramirez, high school student and volunteer from the Urban Peace Movement. The Oakland League of Women Voters organized everything.

The brief back story: This summer, after 13 years of speculation about the fate of the old army base land, the city council approved agreements with developer California Capital and Investment Group to build a state-of-the-art shipping, packaging and distribution facility on the site. Vacated by the army in 1999, the site sits at the base of the Bay Bridge, next to the Port of Oakland. The land is currently has a number of business tenants in commercial space near the bridge, but most of it is covered in parking lots, unused barracks and warehouses. On October 30, the city council approved a project labor agreement (PLA), worked out with the Building Trades Council and local unions, that contains numerous staffing requirements intended to ensure that Oakland residents get jobs created by the project.